Franklin Reporter » John Schroerhttp://blogs.tennessean.com/franklinsunshine
The TennesseanFri, 18 Feb 2011 15:55:00 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6City officials: Monticello wasn’t left out on purposehttp://blogs.tennessean.com/franklinsunshine/2010/09/02/franklins-monticello-project-still-stirs-controversy/
http://blogs.tennessean.com/franklinsunshine/2010/09/02/franklins-monticello-project-still-stirs-controversy/#commentsThu, 02 Sep 2010 21:17:21 +0000Kevin Waltershttp://blogs.tennessean.com/franklinsunshine/?p=754Just in time for Labor Day, here’s an update on the Monticello sewer project and the controversy that’s been stirring among residents about it.

Residents here believe their sewer project should have gotten help from federal stimulus money to help cover the costs installing the sewer lines, etc.

Resident Jay Wade, who I’ve interviewed, has spoken out all along and believes Franklin should have done more to pursue that money – and he told Franklin Mayor John Schroer and City Administrator about it in no uncertain terms. Here’s the video of the meeting from the city’ s Web site. (Yes, that’s me – the bald, scary looking guy – leaning into frame screen left every so often. You’re welcome.)

Afterward, I asked Schroer why he did not want Wade to speak. “I’ve heard it 14 times,” Schroer told me afterwards. “He’s got an opinion. It’s his opinion. And I’ve got a different one.”

In so many words, Franklin officials say they believed the Monticello project wasn’t “shovel ready” – at least as how they understood as it was being defined. In an e-mail to aldermen after the meeting, Stuckey said Wade mischaracterized the process “using general guidelines that were not necessarily the full picture once ARRA funding became a factor. This process later morphed into the allocation of ARRA funds. At the time of submission for SRF, we did have a general understanding from TDEC and various consultants (including CDM, SSR, and Gresham-Smith) that projects could possibly receive ARRA funding through SRF and needed to be ‘shovel ready’. To us this meant projects that were ready for bid. At the SRF due date, we had no approved designs and no easements on Monticello. In fact in March and April of 2009, we were adjusting the sewer depths to deal with the gravity line issues discussed recently.

“The ARRA/SRF process was a fluid process and it is easy, but inaccurate to look back now and say we should have known. We didn’t know any differently. I wish we had. No one has any reason to not pursue grants and at that time we were being very aggressive and working very fast. We acted in good faith with limited information. I can state to you without a doubt that your staff never misled you. This was an ever changing process. We all wish it had been more clear but we did the best we could.”

But here’s the question: Was Simmons Ridge and its developer Jay Franks given precedence over Monticello because he’s a supporter of Schroer? I heard it whispered the other night so I thought I would ask.

Schroer says that isn’t the case.

“I can assure you categorically without question that at no point was there ever a conversation or thought process that would try to exclude Monticello from obtaining money from the stimulus package,” Schroer told me. “We tried to get money for every project that we possibly could.”

Next up, Monticello residents here should expect to see the final assessment figures in the next few months about how much the cost of the project will be for them individually.

The first year of work for City Administrator Eric Stuckey ended Jan. 1. Hired away from Hamilton County government in Cincinnati, Stuckey got a $150,000 a year, six-year contract from the city of Franklin.

So, after a year’s work and lots of challenges, how do the aldermen rate his performance?

As it stands now, that could be left up for Mayor John Schroer and the city aldermen to decide — and you might never know.

Schroer told me today that he’s e-mailing the city aldermen today to ask how they want to proceed with evaluating Stuckey’s work. (No, they won’t have to negotiate a new contract but I understood that annual evaluations would be part of the deal.)

Stuckey is answerable solely to Schroer and the aldermen. **Clarification: He is the board’s sole employee, essentially. BOMA no longer has sway over hiring and firing department heads as they once did. As they said before, the city administrator is the board’s only employee.**

Schroer said today that no written evaluation has been completed or even started. He’s going to ask the aldermen — via e-mail — to work out what they want to do when it comes to evaluating Stuckey’s work.

That could be one-on-one sessions, it might be a public session, it may be written. I pushed him about the evaluations and making them something that the public might see, considering. How else will the public know about what kind of job they think the city administrator is doing?

“At the moment, my inclination is to do one-on-one (sessions) with all the aldermen,” Schroer told me. “They’ll be more likely to give constructive criticisms in one-on-one sessions.”